Something big is happening with online video. Not only are we consuming it more and more (Mark Zuckerberg says 80% of our Facebook feed will be video by next year), but we are consuming it in different ways than we used to. Often it’s vertically – and more often the not, without sound.

Remember that your video most likely is going to be viewed without sound, not only on Facebook – but also on SnapChat.

BUT, what I see most people on SnapChat forgetting is that a lot of people are also watching their snaps without sound. Use text and visual cues to tell your story there to make sure your stories make sense even without sound.

One of the things I’ve focused more and more on the last years is my habits. Changing old ones, and building new. Your life is based on what you spend time and focus on, so optimizing the way I live, work and think helps me feel more fulfilled and motivated.

I try not to focus on too many habits at once, but I usually work with up to five habits at a time. The way I do it is that I set a goal of what habit I want to change or create – and then find the smallest possible thing I could do to move the needle to my goal.

With meditation for example I started 3 years ago with just 5 small minutes of sitting still, last year I did 10 minutes of meditation 5 times a day. I now do 15 minutes, actually I just meditated on the plane minutes before I sat down to write this.

Starting small and slowly building from that works for me, another thing that is important when I work on my habits is logging my progress. I use an app called Habit list where I keep track of all my habits and it gives me a small indication of how many days in a row I did something, or how many days since I’ve completed something.

Being able to see my progress at a glance, and seeing stats on what I’m on track with and what I’m behind on motivates.

Here is a screenshot of my current habit list, and what I’m currently focusing on.

It feels great to design your own life and improve things you would like to change.

In football you want to recruit the youngest talent possible. Before they had the time to get experience, you would train then and coach them. You would use their age to both parties advantage and you would do your absolute best to make sure the young talent got their chance to so the world what they can do.

In business in the other hand. Too many people think the complete opposite. Your to young, you don’t have enough experience. Sorry, I can’t take the risk to give you a chance.

Young talent is on of the best assets we have. Both in football and business. And if you guide them and give them a chance. Magic will happen.

United Influencers have been rolling out Facebook Instant articles the last three weeks to our influencers blogs. It’s still in a early testing phase but so far we are seeing a better organic reach and higher click throug rate (CTR).

The way we consume the web is changing at its important that we as a media house evolve with it. Content should no longer be bound to a fixed frame but set free.

Facebook instant articles and Google AMP is some of the steps we are making to make sure we stay ahead of the competition.

A blog is no longer a blog. It’s content that will adapt to the context and the platform it is consumed within.

I’ve been following the blog space for 15 years now. This is actually the biggest shift I’ve seen since 2007. Exiting times!

I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about renting stuff vs owning stuff. Both in real life, and in the world of marketing. It turns out, that it’s not that big of a difference.

When you rent an appartement, you quickly forget that it’s not yours. You start to settle in, decorating and setting your mark. You might rent for years, until suddenly you get a message from the owner that it’s time to move out. And you have to pack all your stuff, and start fresh somewhere else.

This is the same when you establish your business, build your audience and serve your community on places you don’t own yourself. Like Facebook, Instagram or SnapChat – these are all channels that you do not own. And that you can get kicked out of anytime, or if not kicked out they decided to change up something you don’t want them to.

Lists of emails and websites are different. You own them, and you can do what ever you want with them. So don’t bet all on a place you don’t own, because before you know it you have to move and start over.

Connecting to people is becoming easier and easier. I can reach out to most people in any given city with any given interest via Facebook ads for a few bucks within 30 minutes. I can make sure the right people watch my YouTube video by paying it to be a pre-roll or a recommended video.

So connecting to people is easy, but connecting WITH people is hard. And have never been harder.

We live in an information overload society where people’s actual attention, and building a relationship is really hard.

At the same time a connection with someone, a real relationship have never been worth more.